


you're the cigarette and i'm the smoker

by Nialler



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, I really don't know what happened here, M/M, Ziall - Freeform, just two boys in love, mostly at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 07:39:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3001751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nialler/pseuds/Nialler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He avoids staying at Niall’s place as often as he can; he arrives at the office with his tie undone fifteen minutes late every time, with the look of Niall’s bedroom eyes imprinted into the base of his skull like a newly inked tattoo.<br/>(Zayn is in love; nothing more, nothing less.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're the cigarette and i'm the smoker

He tastes of ashes; of thick, grey flakes that build up on your tongue as you lick into his mouth, an aftertaste that doesn’t become present until Zayn is on his way home in a cab. The taste is so different than the sweet honey and sugar of the first initial sample, the first swipe over his cupid’s bow, the first bite into his prominent collarbones that Zayn considers going back for more, considers leaning up to tell the cabbie _‘yeah mate, turn around, I need to go back and kiss my mate some more.’_  


Zayn doesn’t though, he just licks his lips and rests his head against the frosted window of the cab, peering out between the glazed over crystals at the sky. It’s all cool winter blues today—hues of teal and aquamarine and cyan and azure and all those blues that have only minuscule differences in shades, but all seem to reside in both the sky and Niall’s eyes every time Zayn works up the courage to look into them.  


He gets braver and braver every day.  


Niall is that first pack of cigarettes Zayn bought when he was fifteen, and he told himself he wasn’t the one to get hooked, he would just smoke a fag when he felt like it, when the prospect of hanging out his bedroom window and letting the smoke curl into his veins was exciting. He told himself that Niall was just a boy, at one time, too.  


But now he’s twenty-one and he’s sneaking out of his apartment late at night for a smoke and for a chance of kissing Niall in the silvery, wispy moonlight of his own flat, pressing his bare chest as close to Niall as he can get, swimming and touching and counting heartbeats in the endless oasis of Niall’s cotton sheets almost every single night.  


Zayn knows he’s addicted, he acknowledges it in the same way he acknowledges the fact that his lips don’t curl around a fag as normally as they do when he hasn’t had Niall’s cock in his mouth only minutes before, with a half smirk and a scramble for his phone to call his source of addiction.  


He tips the cabbie extremely well, something he only does after 5 am when he’s just finished shagging his boyfriend.  


xoxo  


Niall is absolutely pitiful in the mornings, the way he wraps himself around Zayn’s naked body like an old, woolen afghan that you just can’t part with no matter how many moth holes it acquires. He hitches a scrawny leg around Zayn’s knees as he snuffs into the dark skin of Zayn’s neck like a perpetually sick child.  


Niall is soft edges in the mornings like that; bright whites that filter in with the sun between the curtains and beam off his bare form like glitter and pixie dust and all things magical that he seems to possess, warm yellows and golds of his hair and the flecks in his eyes when he squints up at Zayn somewhere between the first three alarms of the morning to get him moving, deep azure that reminds Zayn of being six and lazily watching the sky just bob along with protruding, cottony clouds.  


Zayn likes to sketch Niall in the morning during his first mug of coffee, watching Niall stumble around the apartment with mused up hair and the pillow case imprinted on his cheek as he looks for a pair of clean trousers that he only wore for a few hours the previous night. Zayn tries to watch as unsuspiciously as he can, peering over the lip of his mug as his fingers quickly scratch out lines on an old napkin.  


The sketch comes to life with a lost, doe-eyed expression that Zayn would love to go more into detail of every morning, if only he wasn’t thwarted by the smirk Niall sends his way before he drags him back under the duvet, into their own little chunk of quiet laughter and soft kisses as Zayn makes constellations out of the light freckles of Niall’s shoulders.  


He avoids staying at Niall’s place as often as he can; he arrives at the office with his tie undone fifteen minutes late every time, with the look of Niall’s bedroom eyes imprinted into the base of his skull like a newly inked tattoo.  


xoxo  


Zayn is in love; nothing more, nothing less.  


xoxo  


Niall’s cooking pasta over the stove one night, sitting haphazardly on the counter as his left hand stirs occasionally and his right hand flips through an old magazine that has something to do with refurnishing your bathroom.  


Zayn is sitting in the dining room making last minute corrections to his article about the art scene in northern London that’s due bright and early tomorrow morning but he’s zoned out, doing a doodle on the right margin when Niall sticks his head out the kitchen archway, magazine tucked into the waist of his sweats.  


“Do you want to move in with me?”  


Zayn looks up suddenly, biting into the pen cap, “You serious?”  


He shrugs, running a hand through his hair. The pasta is coming to a steady boil behind him and it’ll be too mushy if he doesn’t take the flames down soon but Zayn keeps his lips together. “My place is bigger than yours; it’s easier for us if you would just officially move in. We could set up all your superhero knickknacks to make you feel comfortable, if you’d like.” He’s got a teasing edge to his voice but he grins at Zayn in earnest anyways, tongue pointing out between his teeth.  


Zayn stands up to pinch him in the ribs, before kissing him on the nose quickly, “It’s about goddamn time you asked.”  


Niall whacks him on his backside with the magazine and gets back to cooking dinner, as Zayn leans up against the kitchen arch and rolls up his sleeves to his elbows. “I love you,” he tags on, waving the wooden spoon at Zayn, turning the heat down on the stovetop.  


Zayn decides later that he’s the luckiest man alive.  


xoxo  


“Dance with me?”  


Niall’s voice floats up from underneath the mound of boxes he was previously scavenging through, but now he’s sprawled out on his back, pinned down and washed out by the velvety blue moonlight that comes in through the bay window. He swims in the shadows and when he sits up quickly to look at Zayn, arms folded over his legs, his hair glows white.  


“There isn’t any music,” Zayn deadpans, but he stands up anyways, wiping his palms off on his trousers quickly.  


Niall crawls out from his mess of Zayn’s half unpacked things and presses himself up against his boyfriend, wrapping both arms around his neck and tilting his cheek up to nuzzle into the scruff of Zayn’s jaw, curling his fingers around the stiff collar of Zayn’s rolled up work shirt.  


Trailing a hand down, Zayn adjusts his palm into the small of Niall’s back, using the other to pet through Niall’s messy hair softly. He yawns into his limp fringe and kisses his forehead.  


They sway in the living room, flickering in and out of focus in the shadows of _their_ apartment, navigating clumsily around misplaced boxes. At one point they light a fire and slow dance in the revel of the warm flames, lights licking up their faces and arms as they move to nothing but the crackle of firewood.  


“I love you.”  


“I love _you._ ”  


Zayn can’t help it; he’s a poor man with an addiction.

**Author's Note:**

> i totally just dug this hopeless excuse of a fic/drabble out of my old folder and got caught up in revising it and ended up here. i really don't know - there's just a lot of love between these two and i hope it's soft like this.  
> kudos/comments would be super rad and would actually gear me up into starting the new monster of a fic i'm planning!!


End file.
